USB just... broke. Help?

[usernamenumber]

I came home last night to find my wife's monitor displaying a "no signal" message, as though it had become disconnected from the system (it hadn't). Moving the mouse and keyboard did nothing so I hit the reset button. The machine then came up normally except that neither of her usb devices (a printer and a wifi adapter, which had had no problems before) detected anymore. I tried unplugging and re-connecting the devices as well as rebooting the machine with both devices disconnected and re-connecting them after the system had started, but still nothing.

I'm more comfortable with Linux than with Windows, so to troubleshoot further I booted the machine into knoppix. lsusb showed two usb hubs, but when I plugged in a known-good usb drive there was no reaction by the OS. I then booted my laptop into the same environment, plugged in the usb drive and it detected fine. Based on this, the problem appears to be with the hardware and not the operating system.

So my question is: WTF? It seems really unlikely that both usb ports on this motherboard would just... break, right? Is there anything I might have done that could cause this? The mobo in question is an "Albatron KX18DS PRO RT" but google didn't reveal any known issues and, besides occasionally unplugging the network device without detatching it, I can't think of anything unusual that we've been doing.

Any advice before I try and RMA the motherboard?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help,
--Brad

 

[bodhisatva]

Hey i am kinda like a noob, so dont take my word like the gospel. Actually wen i read ur prob, i suddenly had a recollection bout an article i had read some months back boutUSB devices!
The article talks about y USb thumb drives conk off sooo fast!
I goes on to explain tht the USB port is the highest power output port in the system, so any spike in the supply voltage WILL screw it up!!
So from tht i guess (i dont know for sure, but am giving u some food for thot) ur USB ports and connector mite have gotten fried!! Can u chk ur mobo wires which lead to the usb ports? See whether there is any burn damage to them?
Hope i was of some help!

 

[jihiggs]

i had that happen once. it turned out the 5 volt power connector on my motherboard burned out on the power supply connector. it still worked but it had a lot of resistance, only 3.6 volts was making it to the usb ports. you would probly be having stability problems if that was the problem in your system. maybe your bios battery died and the bios settings reverted to default causing the usb ports to be disabled.

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